Vipassana... an ancient Buddhist technique of meditation, but with no actual
religious affiliation, making it a universally appealing form of
meditation. I have heard of Vipassana
over the years from friends who have tried it at various centres around the
world, and whenever someone had described what it entailed my reaction was,
"My God! 10 days in silence?! Hours and hours of sitting still?! I could
NEVER do that, but I don't know why I would want to anyway." I'm not sure what it was... my quest to
continuously find new challenges for myself on my adventure, the spirit of
India gripping my curiosity or just plain naiveness, but here I am today
having just completed something years ago I said I could NEVER do. This just
encourages me more to believe in the power of yourself, knowing that you really
can do anything you want to do, you just might have to work for it. My first
week of India I met up with some great friends from back home. Three of the four of them were getting ready
to complete their first Vipassana course in a couple of weeks and they started
to plant the seed in my head. For once
in my life, after hearing again about what it would entail I finally said,
"I think I might like to try that."
After separating from them I applied and was accepted to participate in an
April course in the beautiful and pleasantly climated Dharamasala up
north. Well when I got there I learnt
that the Dalai Lama would be giving a public teaching at the same time. I had a tough decision to make, but decided
that seeing the Dalai Lama in person was a unique experience and decided to
forgo my Vipassana challenge for the time being. I decided that if I was meant to do it, I
would find a way. Thomas and Emile, my
friends from home had already completed their course when I met up with them in
Dharamasala to do some trekking. They
talked a lot about it, the good and the bad.
They made sure to warn me that I was in for some hard work, but the hard work
would pay off. I was starting to get a
little nervous about this, I had already heard this from others as well.
Since then I have made quite a tour around and I have found myself in the
very deep, hot, premonsooning south of India.
I applied and was accepted to start a 10 day course in Chennai beginning
June 6th and ending June 17th. I arrived
to Chennai at 6am after a series of buses and overnight trains from
Munnar. Tired, hot and likely stinky I
waited it out in an Internet cafe until I began my bus journey to the centre
around noon. I had been warned that the
auto rickshaw drivers in Chennai are the worst in all of India. After hearing that I wasn't to keen to learn
for myself so after a couple hours of transfers and nice people showing me the
way I arrived at the centre via bus, walking up with a nice Indian gentleman
who was getting ready to complete his second 10 day Vipassana course. After checking in, being told the rules and
having everything repeated to me twice (something I would find to become a
trend in the Vipassana teachings) I settled into my room.
Finally, a bathroom, a shower. I'd
been waiting hours for this! First I try
to flush the toilet... no go. This is
something I've gotten used to in India and have come to accept that pouring
water down the toilet is the best form of flushing, no biggy. I was boiling hot and wanted to turn on the
fan, nothing happened (realized later there was a switch outside that needed to
be turned on). Then realizing I've completely drenched my clothes in sweat from
carrying my heavy backpack around in 39 degree heat, it was time for a
shower. I take my clothes off to hang
them on the hook only to be greeted by a family of spiders hiding in the
corner. One of the first precepts of
Vipassna : no killing anything. Alright
family of spiders, you enjoy your corner webs, spiders don't bother me to much
anyway. Longing to be cooled down by a
cold shower I turn the knob only to be drizzled with three weak streams of
boiling hot water. No problem, looks
like bucket showers are the way to go for me, something I'm not advert to. Then, it must have been the little bits of
water trickling into the drain, but all of the sudden about 8 or 9 MASSIVE
cockroaches came spilling out of the drain.
Of course this is what gets me and I scream running out of the bathroom
leaving the colony of cockroaches and family of spiders to have their fun. So there I am, dripping wet (mostly sweat
rather than the little bits of water dribbled on me) standing in the middle of
my room covering myself from the beady eyed stare of the cockroaches. Now I have dealt with cockroaches in India so
far, but NONE that were ever that size and that many at once. I throw my hands in the air, chuckle to
myself and think, "ok Uninverse, so you're telling me this isn't going to
be easy." I gather the courage and
sweep the cockroaches out of my room while my nearby lady neighbour laughs at
me as I tell my unwanted friends they are not welcomed back. I didn't have to many more problems with
these pests; just a couple here and there and one strange looking mutant
cockroach in the middle of the night one evening, I just pretended I didn't see
it and went back to bed. However one
night the cockroaches did accidentally cause me to break my noble silence when I
came back from a meditation period and there were two on my bedroom floor.
"We had a deal!" I hissed quietly, the deal being that they were only
allowed to be in the bathroom, but I soon realized these were outside
cockroaches not toilet cockroaches, so I apologized for getting angry and swept
them back outside.
Noble Silence, what's that you ask?
Well for the duration of 10 days we are to keep completely silent, with
no form of communications or even eye contact with the other members
participating in the course. Oddly
enough, I didn't find this to be very difficult. I know, who would have thought that I would
be able to keep quiet that long and actually enjoy it! After spending 8 months travelling, and
practically all that time with other people, it was nice to finally just be alone
with myself. Some good quality time with
ones own mind is a good thing and I was well over due for some me time. Turns
out I'm not so bad to hang out with. Some of the other rules we were to follow
was no writing, no reading, no yoga or exercise, no meals after noon and zero
communication unless it was with the teacher.
We also followed a strict schedule that began with the wakeup bell at
4am, consisted of 10.5 hours of meditation, 2 meals/day and lights out at
9:30.
All sounds like fun, right! Well it
was tough to say the least, the first few days dragging on the longest, leaving
me to question "why am I here? What am I learning?" The teachings of the course slowly began to
unravel, revealing some pretty amazing lessons and lots of "ooooooh I get
it" moments. I don't want to spoil
it all for those who have not completed a course and are thinking about
it. I believe the best way to go in is
to know that it will be tough, but worth it and have no expectations. Plus the teachings are far to complex for me
to even try to explain, I am still trying to process it myself and figure out
what I have learnt. Some of the main
points that are stressed are that we are to eradicate all misery from our minds
and in order to do this we must purify our minds by seeking truth; easier said
than done.
My greatest challenge was and is shutting my mind off. Boy did I struggle with this one. I would sit there for hours trying to force
my brain one way and it would go the other.
I daydreamed like you wouldn't believe, imagining everything from what SE
Asia will be like, how good it will feel to hug my family when I go home, who
my roommate will be, what job will I get.... EVERYTHING! This is clearly something I will still need
to work on, but I am excited to see how I will be able to incorporate Vipassana
meditation into my everyday life. Not
just through the actual meditation itself, but how I will bring the lessons
learned into my life through out the day.
Time will only tell....
At the end of the course we have now finally been given the chance to talk
to one another. It's amazing, you spend
all day, everyday with a room of 20 women and have not a clue about any part of
their lives. When silence was first
broken I didn't really know what to do with myself. I felt awkward and unsure of how to socialize
again. I retreated to my room to gather
myself and my thoughts. The ladies
however, were curious to get to know me, where I was from and what I do. I had left my door open to not totally shut
myself away from the others. A young
woman named Ganga around my age walked by, we made eye contact and then the
conversation carried on from there.
She's a recent law school grad and works in research at the Law school
in Bangalore. This was also her third
Vipassana course and she does it often to keep up her practise. Then my neighbour who laughed at me the first
day came over saying "hello Rachel" and introducing herself. It's amazing how we create these different perceptions
about people by just looking at them, and then once we get to actually talk with
them our ideas completely melt away and prove us wrong, very wrong. The two girls that sat on either side of me
for the entire course were both from Chennai.
One works in the Kindle department for Amazon.com and the other is a
freelance children's book writer. What
cool jobs!!
I really enjoyed getting a chance to converse with Indian women throughout
the last day over lunch and tea. It's
been hard to find a chance to sit down with a group of local women here and
have such meaningful conversations. I
found that the women here were very well educated and had such great insights
into so many things regarding Vipassana, as well as certain issues in
India. It was an amazing opportunity to
get to sit down and ask them all the questions I had been wondering about. And just hearing their conversations amongst
each other was so delightful, just getting to understand the typical way of
Indian living, a lot of it being not so different from the sort of female
chatter we would find at home.
One woman at the end of the last meditation came up to talk to me and tell
me that she had admired me." Me?! You admire me?!" was my
reaction. I had been sitting behind her
the entire time and saw that she NEVER would move out of her cross legged
position. Over a two hour sitting I
would change positions more than a handful of times, but she would not move
even once. I admired her strong will and
determination as this had been one of her goals of the course, I know how
incredibly difficult that must have been for her. But she said she had
admired how I was able to come from Canada and adapt so easily to the food, the
culture and the climate, especially while doing Vipassana. She said she was observing me over the course
and saw that I never showed any signs of discomfort. She clearly had no idea what was going on in
my head, there was definitely discomfort.
She understood the difficulties as she is from Chennai but has been
living in the US for the last 5 years. I
took this as an extreme compliment and was humbled by her opinion of me. It was also another lesson. We know that people will obviously be
observing us and passing judgements on us all the time. We often assume that the judgements people
are making about us are going to be negative judgements, our minds don't work
in our favour. But once again I was
wrong, and should be more open to people actually thinking positive judgements
rather than jumping to negative conclusions.
I tend to think of myself as a positive thinking person so this was a
bit of a kick in the butt sort of moment where I realize I might not know
myself as well as I think I do, learn something new everyday.
As we all left the center we said our good byes, exchanged emails and made
plans to keep in touch with our new friends who we had been able to speak with
for only one day, but had gotten to know in a different sense for 10 days.
Vipassana was an amazing experience, something I wouldn't change and would
definitely do again. But it was tough,
knocked me down a few times and than somehow I came back to my feet. I look forward to the next time I will be
able to complete another course. This is a technique that I cannot master in just 10 days, I often felt overwhelmed with all the
information coming at me. Therefore I
look forward to when I get the chance to complete a course when I get back to
Canada in order to go deeper into the meditation, hopefully giving me a chance
to grow further. If anyone wants to join me, feel free!
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